


Let Us Not Forget The Dead

by Colourofsaying



Category: CHRISTIE Agatha - Works, Death Comes as the End - Agatha Christie
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/pseuds/Colourofsaying





	Let Us Not Forget The Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/gifts).



A few years into his service as Imhotep’s scribe, Hori had been present at an opening of the tomb. There had been a rash of robberies, and though it seemed unlikely that the thieves would have come so far from the main burial grounds, it had been Imhotep’s duty to take inventory and, having made sure that no small piece was missing, re-seal the tomb with as many protections as could be devised.

            At the time, he hadn’t seen the point; every day, they went to the chapel, and neither the door of the tomb nor the stele above it had ever shown any signs of disturbance. Imhotep had not been pleased, either. The rites to appease the dead for disturbing their rest were costly and time-consuming, and the harvest was almost complete; the caravans would be coming soon, and there was more than enough to do without the added inconvenience of what were, in all likelihood, completely unnecessary precautions.

            “Still,” Imhotep said, hands fluttering as he stooped over Hori’s shoulder, “out of respect for the Noble Meriptah, the proper thing must be done, you know, everything to ensure his comfort and security in the afterlife, and of course we must assure the family of the Noble Meriptah that not even the smallest detail has been let slide – no, no, Yahmose, the second-grade kyphi will do, what does it matter if the roses were from Persia? You must learn to be more cautious, my son.”

            Imhotep had skittered off to berate his eldest son, and Hori had focused all his attention on adding up the figures and noting down the amounts required for each stage of the ritual; it was complex enough, and if he were concentrated on his work, he would not have to tell his friend, later, that he had heard what his father had said.

            A few days later, they stood in front of the tomb in the blinding glare of early morning, and watched as workmen carefully levered out the door and cleared the steps of debris. It would all have to be replaced, and the workmen would have to be paid, and every hour they spent away from the fields the harvest grew less valuable. It never ended, this weighing of value, in this life or the next, but what he measured and exchanged was physical, immediate, based on realities of weather and policy. He thought of the irregularity of feathers, and looked down at his wax tablet.

            The door to the inner chamber opened, and an overwhelming wave of scent rolled out – myrrh and sandalwood, cedar, roses, cinnamon, a myriad of spices and the too-sweet scent of long-decayed fruits, and all the perfume unable to disguise or remain untainted by the unfamiliar but unmistakable odor of rotting death.

            Around him, men were choking with nausea. Hori walked quietly to the edge of the path, knelt down, and vomited.

 

            Five Inundations had passed since the opening of the tomb, and it felt as if the air around him had become more stagnant with each season. Across the plains, invisible and inexorable, the face of Egypt was shifting. In the distant haze, a village had become a town, had become a city – these days, if the air were clear and the light was right, Hori could make out the shining new temples looming against the cliff by the city. Eight Inundations had flooded the fields since Renisenb left, and they had changed the shape of the river, redirected the annual journeys of the traders by camel and by boat, but they had not changed the estate; inside, each day that passed contained nothing that had not come before, and would not come again.

            It seemed to him, sometimes, that the people in that distant city must be as incapable of noting its changes as the people of this estate were incapable of noting its sameness. Perhaps each day seemed much as the one before it, and it was only from here, from this place of the dead, writing the figures of the dead, that one could observe the progress of the living. Hori knew that Yahmose, at least, felt the estate closing around him, but even so he never longed to leave it; he wished for his position in it to change, and that alone. These days Yahmose’s temper was quick to rise, and Hori, who had been born in the same season and had spent all his years with him, sometimes thought that some strange shadow, flickering and indistinct, had come to rest in his friend’s eyes.

            Some days, when Yahmose’s smile was a little slow too fade and the darkness of late nights and too much drink were dark under Sobek’s eyes, Hori thought he could catch the faintest scent of the closed tomb seeping through the stone.

            Renisenb came up to the tomb, silhouetted against the setting sun. She sat down beside him and looked out over the land, towards the city.

            “I am glad I am here,” she said. “In the city, after Khay died… I am glad I am here.”

            “Was Khay’s family unkind to you?” he asked. He remembered when Satipy had first come. She had never been gentle, but in those days, one didn’t notice; her energy, her constant, tireless struggle for order – he had liked her, when she had first come and often walked the cliff path to keep them company as he and Yahmose finished the figures for the day.

            “No, they were never unkind,” she said slowly. “But Teti had no value for them. Khay was a third son, and so his daughter had no place, and so I had no place. And that was good. I am glad I did not have a son. I could not have come back if I had had a son.”

            “No,” he agreed. Over time, Satipy’s energy had taken on a brittle cast; her desire for order had become an obsession, her eager instructions, tyrannical commands. He wondered, suddenly, if she felt now like Renisenb had felt at the house in the city. She did not even have a daughter to tie her here. “I am glad you have come back, Renisenb. You were missed.”

            “And I will not be, there,” she said. Her voice was even, undisturbed. He looked at her; her face was untroubled. To her, it was simply a fact; she had spent eight years in a house, and the people of it would not notice her absence. “That is the difference.”

            “Do you miss your life there?” he asked. She was watching the sky as the last traces of red faded. Soon it would be too dark to walk the cliff path safely, even with a light. He began to put away his things.

            “At the beginning, I missed – oh, everything. Khay, and the boat, and the Nile,” she said. “Teti – she cried every day, after – not for her father, but for the boat and the river. She used to play, and I would be so worried that she would fall in, but Khay laughed at me. He was always laughing.”

            She paused for a moment, thinking. Hori, the last of his things put away, stood, and watched her watch the sky. She smelled sweet, like fresh-cut papyrus and sunlight, and a little of almonds, and human, and alive.

            “Do you think we need to forget, to be happy?” she asked.

            “I think we cannot forget and be happy,” he said. He helped her up from the stone, and they set off down the path together. “Someday, remembering will be sweet. If you forget, you will lose the river and the boat, and all the things that were good there. You will be happy again.”

            She nodded, and it seemed to him as if she looked satisfied, like she had heard what she wanted, or like what he had said had tipped the balance in his favor.

 

            Some days later, he and Yahmose stood in the shade of a palm tree, weighing the merits of the flax harvest.

“The flax is growing well,” Hori offered, and slipped his sandals off to put his feet in the cooler waters of the Nile. Yahmose nodded, and did the same. It was a hot day, and the damp moisture of the flax fields clung to everything.

            “The Inundation was good this year,” he said. “And in Abydos, they planted late. It will not be a good harvest this year. Father will be pleased.”

            Today they were checking the progress of the crops; the plants were still young, and they had to decide what portion to harvest for the fine linen. Already, some of the sprouts were beginning to lose their seed heads. In ten days or so, the majority of the crop would be too old to harvest for the very best linen.

            “If Abydos has little flax this year, they will need sails,” Hori said. There was less profit to be made from the coarser linen, but the lower profit was mitigated by what he felt was a commensurate lower risk. “And the cost of clothing will be higher.”

            “For the rich as well as the poor,” Yahmose argued. It was an old debate, and they fell into their roles with the pleasure of familiarity, a companionable discussion for the sake of discussion. The times and ratios of the harvest would not change, and if the profits were higher this year, they would not be greatly so. “Fine linens will be twice as expensive.”

            “But there are not so many to buy them. Let us think of the other estates,” Hori said, pressing a list into the wax tablet with his stylus, the pattern rote. “Will they choose to harvest early or late, with the crops at Abydos poor?”

            “Many will harvest late,” Yahmose said thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is better to harvest early, and avoid the risk of disease.”

            “If we harvest early, though, we will have nothing but fine linen, and it may sit in our storerooms with no purchaser,” Hori countered. “But there will always be a need for sails, and for ordinary clothing, and for bedding.”

            “And let us not forget the dead,” Yahmose said, laughing. “We who live on this estate are well aware that there must always be linens for the dead.”

            He fell silent, suddenly, and then continued.

            “Yes, there must always be linens for the dead…”

            Hori looked at him. He was facing the flax fields, looking at them thoughtfully, but it seemed to him that Yahmose did not see them; what he saw was something infinitely more interesting, as if to him they represented something else entirely. He wondered if it was what he saw when he looked across the plains, if the fresh green of the flax and the dark black soil represented the same potential for change.

            Eventually, he sighed, and turned back to Hori.

            “So, little Renisenb has been walking the cliff path, recently,” he said, grinning. “What do you talk of, alone in your cave?”

            Hori looked at him for a moment, then leaned down, scooped a handful of mud from the bottom of the Nile, and ground it into Yahmose’s hair. His friend shouted and shoved him into the water, and it was a long time before they crept exhausted back to shore.

 

            It wasn't much later that he stood at the base of the cliff, and thought that there were many in that house who had hated Nofret. Her body was no longer beautiful; the fall from the cliff had distorted it, left broken limbs lying at unnatural angles, bruised and abraded the smooth skin. And she could have simply fallen. It was not an easy path, in that place.

            He did not believe she had fallen. Neither did anyone else, except perhaps Renisenb, who had seen a sister in a woman who had hated her. She, looking at her family, would not believe that any of them could be responsible for another human being’s death, and he, looking at them, could not believe that any of them were incapable of a death. Satipy’s jealousy, Kait’s protective rigidity, Sobek’s humiliation – any of these might have been a tipping point, and might be again. And then there was Yahmose, his friend, who had been too quiet since she came, whose quiet could be dangerous.

            No, he did not believe she had fallen. Not in this house.

            And he himself might have pushed her, this beautiful woman from the distant city, with her too-brazen glances and her open disdain. It was not impossible to imagine; walking down the cliff path, and seeing her come towards him, closer and closer, and then the lightest push and he would have watched her body tumble down and down until it crumpled against the desert floor. He might have pushed her and walked on, stepping past the place she had fallen and scuffing out her footprints in the dust of the path, as someone else had done, and he would not have found it hard. And ten years ago, he would not have found it possible.

            The scent of the tomb enveloped him and he choked, the air in his throat clogged by the noxious sticky odor until he felt that he could no longer breathe, and then he was no longer standing outside the opened tomb but was inside it, in the darkness, with the trappings of the afterlife and the dead.

 


End file.
